Can anyone tell me the software that the top hollywood DVDs are produced with? Is it Sonic Scenarist? I've read a few things about scenarist, and it seems to offer the most flexibility in terms of producing discs. Something that allows full access to the DVD specs. I've got experience with the old Spruce system, but even that was limiting in terms of limiting access to the GPRM registers.

What about hardware encoding technology? In terms of encoding feature films for mass distribution, is the sonic SD-2000 card the top SDI hardware-based MPEG-2 encoding board, or are there superior models available from competing companies? Is the SD-2000 old news now?

All I know, from rumor and hearsay, is that Sonic Scenarist seems to be the most popular in production environments. The feature set is certainly daunting.

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him...a super-callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

I'll drink to that. I've been tinkering with Scenarist and it looks like it can do absolutely everything that the DVD spec allows. It took me some time to figure it out, and this is coming from a guy who is cursed with the ability to figure things out very quickly. It has just a couple of wizards but otherwise it does very little "hand holding" (doing things for you automatically and hiding from you the nitty gritty details of how it really works). To learn how to use Scenarist you start by learning the nuts and bolts of the DVD spec: title sets, PGC's, cells, etc. If you need access to GPRM, Scenarist has that too.

I don't know if Scenarist really is the choice of professionals, but if it is, I can see why.

From the research I've done the following seem to be the most popular: Sonic Scenarist on the PC and Sonic Creator on the Mac. Note: Columbia uses their own proprietary authoring/encoding workstation. Panasonic also produces a propreietary system.

For heavy duty DVDs that push the format to the wall, either Sonic Scenarist, Sony's or Panasonic's proprietary system are used.

I don't know Jeff, but if you're particularly brave, you can search google for a utility called IFOEdit (I'd provide a link, but it may be against the forum rules). It allows you to edit .ifo files, which are basically the configuration/scripting file used to describe the contents of a DVD. You can use this tool to compare the .ifo file of a DVD that does what you want, and you can change your new .ifo file to match.

I'd imagine that Scenarist doesn't deviate much from the cryptic low-level stuff, based on what I've read here (it will still use terms like PGC, cels, subpictures, etc.).

There are quite a few guides out there that might be helpful. Of course, most of them assume you're using a low-level tool like ifoedit. I believe the ifoedit home page has a link to a base specification of the ifo file format with a description for each field/table (including the bits you need to set to enable menu navigation, plus descriptions of pre/post commands, so that if a given video stream ends, you can be taken to a specific menu, for example).

Yes, it is complicated. At this point in time, you may need to hit the low-level stuff. It sounds like Scenarist doesn't provide any documentation! Uh, assuming you are using that of course. If not, that's ok...quite a few free tools edit .ifo files directly. I just can't provide a link to them because they have all this "other" stuff that breaks forum rules.

Oh, and it is true that you can reuse a video element as many times as you want. I just don't know the commands to do that yet.

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him...a super-callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Anyhow, the IFOEdit official page has lots of links to um...questionable material. Shouldn't be hard to find though. The hard part is finding the IFO file documentation (a separate site). I'll see what i can dig up.

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him...a super-callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

The above link is also found on the ifoedit official site too, called "DVD Technical Info".

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him...a super-callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him...a super-callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

1- If I let Simulation mode render my subs for preview, I can't make a DVD-Video image. Since I want yellow on black subs, and not red on blue, this is an issue because I have 104 subtitles that need changing Supposedly I can use a script for this, but any insight would be helpful

2- How do I make it so that when menu is pressed it goes back to the video's menu and not the main (root) menu? I was given some clue to this, set up some kind of dummy PGC but not quite clear on it.

Slowly but surely I'm getting it. I have most of the basic basics down now

You can change sub colors in the simulation window, and you can also set defaults but it may be too late if you've already put all 104 subs onto the track. Back up and do it again, yup, this is why it takes a studio six months to master a DVD.

Are you putting all of your video into one title set? I think the Menu button always goes to the designated root menu and you can have only one root menu per title set. I just finished my first project and I had two title sets with a root menu for each one. I put a title menu in the Video Manager to select each title set. The terminology is bass-ackwards. The menu at the root is the title menu and the submenu for each title is the root menu.

In the Title Menu you can have the buttons either jump to the PGC of each title set's root menu, or start playback immediately by jumping to the PGC of the video. I suppose you could have additional buttons to do both options.

First PGC has its Pre linked to the FBI warning PGC. FBI warning PGC has its Post linked to the Title Menu PGC.

Title Set 1
--English (I think using a language at the title set level is optional)
----Root Menu 1 PGC
------Root Menu 1 buttons (links to each chapter)
--Video 1 PGC
----(chapters)

Video 1 PGC has its Post linked to the Title Menu PGC. Or I think I could have linked it to the video PGC of the next title set to play both title sets back to back. Somehow there's a way to do "play one" and "play all" without duplicating the video.

Hey Jeff, I'm trying to figure out how to do a menu that is essentially the same as the deleted scenes menu on the Austin Powers DVDs. You can pick each deleted scene individually, or you can choose "play all" to watch all of them back to back. Any ideas on how the pros work this magic?